BattleRifleG3 said:
Slug Guns - The More I Use Them, the More I Like Them
By Randy D. Smith
I guess you could call it the "peasant gun" and I'm just peasant enough to know. Peter Capstick wrote in one of his many books that the slug gun is the "poor man's express rifle." He went on to say that many professional hunters in Africa use them for everything from bird hunting with shot loads to Cape buffalo with slugs under the right conditions. He would use nothing else for going after a wounded leopard. A pump shotgun loaded with buckshot saved his bacon more than once.
I've heard that shotguns are occasionally employed in the northland for bears and I've read from several sources that at close range nothing is more devastating than heavy loads of buckshot for defense against man or beast. During my brief stint as a maximum-security corrections officer, I was twice handed a pump shotgun by the shift captain and told to follow him into a cell house ruckus. If things went bad I was instructed to shoot into the floor in front of the inmates so the pellets would catch them in the legs. It is amazing how quickly a cell house run will clear when a pissed off shift commander and backup appear with 12 gauges.
Back when I used to do a lot of research on the Santa Fe Trail caravans of the 1830's to 1850's, I read a journal saying that there were two distinct opinions on what was the better firearm to carry on the trail. The riflemen liked the range and power of their plains rifles. The shot gunners using both buck and ball loads liked the flexibility of their muzzleloaders because they could hunt much more abundant small game as the caravans passed along the trail. There was a saying at the time that a man with a shotgun never went hungry. They also preferred shotguns for standing night guard. In an age when spectacles were not commonly worn, many men couldn't see well enough to be proficient riflemen.
OK, I'll buy into that. As nearsighted as I am, I can't even see the front sight on a rifle without my glasses. For years after graduating from college I was just a poor cowpoke and hardscrabble farmer who also taught school to make a living. Before I realized that I could make a better living doing almost anything else, I carried a bolt action Marlin Goose Gun with the barrel shortened to twenty-five inches behind the seat of my jeep pickup. A guy wanted an old camera of mine and I traded for the Marlin.
During pheasant season, if I spotted a rooster while working, I'd fish out that Marlin, load the clip with some #6's and go on an impromptu, and usually successful, pheasant hunt. In spite of that sawed off Marlin having the same choke as a sewer pipe, I've knocked down birds at fifty yards using three-inch shells.
During calving season from the last week of February until the middle of April, that Marlin rode in the seat just on the other side of the vitamin A shots and ear tags, usually loaded with 00 buck with a handful of one ounce rifled slugs jammed in the glove compartment. Coyotes, feral dogs, and pushy varmints got the buckshot and suffering critters with no hope got the slugs. That Marlin seldom got cleaned and very rarely oiled. The stock was scarred from bouncing around on bare metal in a four wheel drive vehicle that was used to feed cattle, pull a horse trailer, fix fence, ear tag calves, plow snow drifts, ford creeks and herd balky bulls.
Whoever shortened the barrel did a poor job of removing the old finish and I just poured on the cold blue to keep it from rusting. I wasn't much interested in hunting or fancy firearms in those days, just surviving. I had better at home, but they were too good for that kind of abuse.
Although I didn't realize it then, that old Marlin may have been the most versatile and useful firearm I could have owned. I got a whole fifty bucks out of it on a trade a few years back and thought I got the better of the deal. It was a poor man's express rifle before I ever knew what an express rifle was. But I was raised in a world where there were only two firearms worth having, a .22 rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun. In central and western Kansas before the 1970s a fellow seldom even saw a deer or a turkey much less hunted one. How much the world has changed since then!
When I finally learned that a person could make a living wage and have enough left over for toys if he got out of farming, I started experimenting with rifles, shotguns and handguns. I even became an outdoor writer on the side. The pay was almost as terrible as ranching but it was fun so I've stayed with it for nearly twenty years.
A few seasons ago I went back to experimenting with slug guns due to range concerns I had for deer hunting in the same general area where I used to cowboy. When I sold my Mossberg collection because all it was doing was sitting in my gun safe collecting dust, I went shopping for an all-purpose slug gun for close range coyote calling and jump shooting deer.
I paraphrased for the fixed barrel on the receiver slug gun
